If you feel really busy, but by the end of the week you haven’t done the main thing you set out to do on Monday, you may need a weekly calendar. I have to admit, I only started doing this … Read More
psychology
My best productivity hack
Is anyone’s life slowing down? Work isn’t slowing down. Life isn’t slowing down. How do you handle it all? I’ll share a few things I do, including the simple, most useful, best productivity hack I’ve discovered recently. Get Control of … Read More
Language Traps
I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about how storytelling is important for sales (and marketing), and particularly the way language helps construct our reality, which means it can also lead us into traps. For example, how … Read More
Canyons and Bridges
When you’re selling, you want to close the deal quickly. But when you’re buying, you want to make sure you’re doing what’s right for you, which can be particularly hard if you don’t have a lot of expertise in the … Read More
Will the end of the movie business end your business?
In my last post, I made the seemingly preposterous claim that every business is a media business. Some people agreed, some people disagreed, but the hypothesis definitely caught people’s attention. So, it might be worth asking, what’s happening with the … Read More
Before you do your 2017 strategic planning…
It’s almost that time of the year again, when people start 2017 strategic planning. Before you do, look at this chart, from WaitButWhy.com. Each row is a year and each box is a week. While planning for next year … Read More
“Raise Prices” Marc Andreessen says you should
Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) was on Tim Ferriss’s (@TimFerriss) podcast recently, and Tim always asks his guests what they would put on a billboard. Marc said two words: “I’ve got one, I’ve actually thought about hiring a skywriter to … Read More
12 Secrets of Successful Sales Conversations
You’ve finally got a meeting scheduled with your prospect. (If you missed them, you might want to read about how to get more people to convert on your site, and when to call them to get an initial conversation.) I … Read More
Price Competition How to Avoid It and How to Win It
Price competition can seem scary, but many of the wounds are self-inflicted. While that sounds discouraging, it’s actually good, because it means you can take control of them, avoid them, and win deals at better price points. Pricing is the … Read More
Economic Theory vs Human Nature III: 3 Sales Tips
In earlier posts in this series, we looked at why human nature causes you to underprice your proposals and favor sins of omission over sins of commission, even against our own economic interests. Now we’ll look at some strategies for … Read More